How do you distinguish between grandparents? And other pressing issues

My husband's grandma has insisted on "Grandmother" for the past 37 years, and she insists that people who are the family refer to her as "Mrs. ". My mother in law has been a part of the family for close to 40 years now, and still refers to her that way.

My husband's parents are MawMaw and PawPaw (what my mother in law called her grandparents). My mom is a little harder, because I refer to her mother as Grandma Mary. I often call my mom Grandma Mary instead of Grandma Marty out of habit. Paul calls her "emmmmmmmaa". My dad is grandpa, and we refer to my remaining grandparents as we did when I was a kid.

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we call my husband's parents - Grandma and Boppa (I hated that name "boppa" b/c my nephew started that b/c he couldn't pronounce Grandpa at 2yrs) It has stuck now, and we just call my mom and dad Grandma and Grandpa. Or mom's parents. It is helpful if one granparent is from some foreign land and you can use: Nana, Nona, Papa, etc. Kids will know who you are talking about when they get older. We also use last names for the grandmas.

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My daughter started calling my husbands parents Grandma and Grandpa Nut after she played several games of Candyland with Grandma. The name stuck and now everyone calls them that. My daughter also nicknamed their house "The Nuthouse". It's fitting since Grandma is pretty goofy and fun.

My parents are Grandma and Grandpa Cookie because when she couldn't properly pronounce their name when she was younger and it came out sounding like cookie. Right about that time Grandma made her a giant, heart-shaped,sugar cookie for Valentines day so that played into it as well.

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Having a close connection with your ethnicity helps! My family is Portuguese and my parents speak the language fluently. My father is known as Vavo (vuhvoo). Avo is the Portuguese for grandfather and grandmother (with different accents on the "o"), so we've added the "v" at the beginning to make it less confusing. My father-in-law is Papa. I have one living grandmother and she is known as Avozihna (again, Portuguese). My husband also has one living grandmother and she is known as Granny Goose (we can thank his cousin's oldest daughter for that!). The only problem is with the Grandmothers. They are both known as Grandma. My children distinguish them as Grandma from Grandma & Papa or Grandma from Grandma & Vavo. It's not the most efficient way to to it, but it seems to be working for now!

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My Mom is Grammy, and my Mother-in-law was Grandma. My Dad is Granddaddy, and my Father-in-law was Grandpa. They each choose what they wanted to be called. My Aunt is Nana to her grandchildren. Other families I know have used names for Grandmothers in languages that reflect their heritage. In your situation, Grandma Pat and Grandma might be enough to distinguish between them in conversation. The Grandfathers may be harder, maybe your son could choose something special for them?

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I planned for the grandparent issue before the kids were born. My father's father was Grampy, and my dad looks and acts just like him, so I always knew that he was looking forward to one day being a Grampy himself. I claimed that for him early. My mother, on the other hand, wanted to be Nana. My dad's mother was still alive, and she was Grammie, and my mom didn't want to be another Grammie while the first one was still around.

My wife's mother would end up being Grammie. When we'd ask my father in law what he wanted to be, he would respond, "They can call me Paul." "That's going to end up as Papa you realize," I would say.

Sure enough we have Papa and "Gammie" on one side -- I'm not sure if the kids really pronounced it that way or if it sounded cuter so the adults all reinforce it. On the other side we got Grampy and "Nanta", with a t, like "Santa." Don't know how that happened, but my mom loves it, she thinks it's unique. Of course we can never find personalized picture frames and things come Christmas time :).

(Oh, and my dad's mother, when we see her, is "great grammie." She's the only one of the great-grands still with us.)

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Except for my mother now 93, we are Grandma Ann (me), Grandma Carol (my daughter), & Grandma Nancy (their maternal grandma). It seems to work with a grandma and great-grandma living in the same house.

My mom is Grandma (great-great)with her last name.

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We have a lot of grandparents, so this was a big deal for us. My dad is Papa, b/c his dad was my Papa. His wife, my stepmom, is just Grandma. My mom didn't want to be Grandma if my stepmother was Grandma, so she became Nana. Her husband is Pop-Pop. Not sure why - his other grandkids call him G-Pa, but to me that sounds like G-Spot, so I nixed it. My father-in-law is Poppy to everyone, so we call my mother-in-law Moppy. There are also four great grandmas (see, told you there were a lot!!). One is Granny, one is Granny Ana, one is Grandma Lilly and one is Miki, LOL.

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Soon after my eldest was born, my mother remarried and I inherited a step-dad and a step grandma. Also, not only were 3 of my Grandparents still alive at the time, my great grandmother (Whom my baby sister always referred to as "little-grandma-with-the-rocking-chair-and-the-stairs" but we just called GG for great-grandma) was also still living. (People in my family start young...that's a different comment though.) My husband's parents were both still alive and he had a step-grandmother also living (but we never met her, so she never really needed a moniker.)

At Kieran's 3rd birthday, he had all of his 9(!)grandparents there (except for the last one mentioned above.) What a picture! They were: Nana & Papa Jeff, GG Hunaway, GG and Pawpaw Doutin, Great GG (Doutin), Granny "B", and Grandma and Grandpa Martin. Whew!

Unfortunately, we are now down to 5 grand parents, so my youngest doesn't have so many to remember. However, when he, at 17 mo.s old, says "GG" it comes out sounding a little French, Gigi, with a zchu sound (like when I mispronounce Szechuan.) Imagine Texan French for a moment; I believe it's quite rare... as well it should be!

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We have (on my side) Grandma and Grandpa Williams AND Nanny and Pappy AND Mamaw Betty AND Great Grandma Lee. (My parents are divorced so the whole thing gets even more confusing with the extra sets of GP's!) On my hubby's side we have Grandma and Grandpa Dollar.

The grandmas are kept straight by the kids asking such important questions as "Grandma with the doggies?" (my mom has 2 dogs) or "Grandma with the cousins?" (Hubby's parents have 10 grandkids) or "Grandma with the singing birdy?" (little bird statue that Mamaw Betty has that sings)

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I let my in-laws pick what they wanted to be called. MIL wanted to be Nana Wendy and FIL wanted Grandpa Tom. My dad is Papa to all his 7 grandkids. My mom died 9 years ago, so we call her "Nana Jo in Heaven." Now if my dd could just remember names and faces for her 9 aunts & uncles and her 11 great aunts & uncles.

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I'm with the rest - we went with Nana and Pop-pop for one set, and Grandma for the other. I have friends who use Oma and Opa, Nannie, Babci, or other ethnic variations. If they both want to be Grandma and Grandpa, then I guess accompanying them with first names is the logical choice. I had it easy - having the first grandchild for both sides of the family made it easy to set the precedence!

On the other hand, we both have siblings, and only one of them is "aunt" or "uncle" - all the rest are first names! How does your family feel about it - do they have a preference, or more of a turf war? ;-)

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My Mom: Nana
My stepfather: Paw-paw (Insert name here.)
My stepmother: Granny
My dad: Paw paw
My FIL: Grandpa?
My MIL: We originally decided "grammy" but I feel weird saying that, though I'm the one who came up with it. Instead it is usually "G-mumblemumble"

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I am the child of divorce and remarrying so there are lots of grandpa's and grandma's for my son!
my mom- grandma
my dad (ex-step dad rather)- papa
my MIL- grandma
my FIL- grandpa
my grandmother, my mother's mom- GiGi (stands for Great Grandmother)
my grandparents on my birth father's side- grandma and grandpa with their dog Trouble
my husband's grandmother- grammy
my dad's (ex-step dad's)- parents- grandma and grandpa with their dog annie

It's so much easier for Jerrett to remember who's who if they have a pet!

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i forgot, we called my great grandfather "grandpa-coo-coo-clock" b/c he had a really cool clock. It sounds weird, but it seemed so normal at the time!

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Why not just use different words? English has a lot of words for various grandparents: Grandma, granny, nana, grandmother, grandmama, meemaw.... Or Grandpa, gramps, pop-pop, grandfather, granddaddy, on and on it goes. And that's not even counting variations only found in specific families.

In a pinch, you can even import a term from another language, or resort to saying "Well, I'm Mommy, and my mother is Ma. And this is Daddy, but *my* father is Dad." This has the added benefit of not forcing you to change what you call your own parents :)

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This is so timely for me. In our house growing up, both sets of grandparents were Grandma or Grandpa. We just distinguished them using last names.

Now, however, my parents are Grandma and Grandpa but my husband's are Maw Maw and Paw Paw. I thought that sounded so silly when I first heard it because I never had before.

Now, however, it is totally getting on my nerves. Whenever his mother calls (every week), she begs him to put her on speakerphone so she can say "HI MAW MAW!! HI MAW MAW!! HI MAW MAW!!" over and over and over and over and over again to our son. I really like her but that just gets on my nerves like nothing else. And of course, my son sits there with a confused look on his face (he's 15 months and has only seen her on three separate occasions since we live 2000+ miles away).

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Since my husband is dutch we refer to his parents in Dutch, and mine in English, my grandpearents are of italian ancestory so they go by italian for grandma and grandpa, then my husbands grandma goes by the dutch for grandma and her last name (how we call her basically). So it is as follows:

Paternal Grandma: Oma
Paternal Grandpa: Opa
Maternal Grandma: Grandma
Maternal Grandpa: Grandpa
Paternal Great Grandma: Oma Versteeg
Maternal Great Grandma: Nonna
Maternal Great Grandpa: Nonnu

And finally my moms's boyfriend of many years goes by Grandpa Bill...

Confusing?

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We just call them all Grandma & Grandpa. (Or Ma-ma and Ba-pa as Morgan says.) If we need to make a distinction we say something like Grandpa Cars (my FIL collects classic cars) or Grandpa Airplane (my dad is an aviation buff). I don't see any need to make further distinction. Morgan seems to understand that she has 3 different Grandmas and 2 different Grandpas. She's only seen them a handful of times (we live on opposite coasts) but can ID them in pictures and everything. Its how we did it growing up, too, and I never remember being confused.

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My Mom - Grandma
My dad - Poppy (what I used to call my grandfather)
My MIL - Bubby
My FIL - PopPop (stolen from Arrested development)

My grandmother - GG (great grandma)

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